


Silver Leaves Tattooed upon my Heart

by ximeria



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Secrets, Softness, betaed we ascend with Aziraphale, rated m for celestial sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ximeria/pseuds/ximeria
Summary: Aziraphale has a secret. He has carried it with him for thousands of years. If Heaven or Hell find out, it might put Crowley and himself in even more danger.If Crowley finds out, Aziraphale will have to face what he's been concealing even from himself.With the almost end of the world come and gone, the choice is taken out of Aziraphale's hands.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 107
Collections: MFU Palentine's Day Exchange





	Silver Leaves Tattooed upon my Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atmilliways](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/gifts).



> This was written for the MFU palentine exchange. Such a lovely opportunity to show my soft underbelly to the world. Because I am. This fandom has shown me a new love for utter softness and fluff.
> 
> Thank you to Meinposhbastard, to whom you all owe the fact that the story grew by leaps and bounds ;) - always a pleasure, you greedy, glorious bastard. You hoard words like a certain angel hoards books.

It's a nagging worry.

Having lent Crowley his corporation and currently wearing the demon's body, Aziraphale can't help but worry. He's been dressed down to, if you ask him, tasteful underwear covering everything that Crowley doesn't normally. 

He hopes Heaven hasn't forced Crowley out of the layers. With the whole Armageddon not happening, Aziraphale forgot that Crowley might see something he's kept a secret for many years.

No matter what Aziraphale has tried to convince himself of through the ages, his body bears witness to his feelings for Crowley. Plain and simple. He knows his core, his celestial self is covered in it. It has been for millennia. He wasn't sure when it had first started appearing, but at some point around the early ADs, he'd started noticing the markings appearing on his true form.

One day he had checked on his celestial form, as he was wont to do, parting the protective cloud covers surrounding it to let starlight in. It felt so lovely to bathe in and even better when he could stretch all of his wings out to catch it and open all of his eyes to witness its glory.

And there he had seen it. In the glorious starlight he had noticed a small line of leaves covering what was essentially the closest his true form had been to an arm.

In the beginning he had ignored it. Or at least tried to. Then the script had caught his eye and he'd known, even if he hadn't wanted to face the truth. Eventually, the true form was a masterpiece of leaves and intricate writing. Good thing Aziraphale never took that form even among his own. He left it dormant in its little cloud fortress, hoping it would not be needed. Knowing it would be, once Armageddon rolled around, but he was a master at ignoring little details like that.

As humans would say, the devil was in the details, though in this case, perhaps the better description was demon rather than devil. After all, it wasn't Morningstar's name written inside the leaves, along their stems and ribs. The terms of endearment had one focus only.

The silver was nearly as pale as his celestial self, but it still offset against it, even more so against the green of the leaves. The words, in any and every language ever uttered or written, mortal as well as immortal, spoke of 'beloved' of 'heart of my heart'.

'Love of my life.'

He hadn't dared look at his own true form again until he'd noticed a small ivy like design on the underside of his arm one night. The very same night when Crowley had walked across consecrated ground for him and saved something dear to Aziraphale without even being prompted, hinted at or outright asked to.

Aziraphale had stared at the leaves, had seen the words. German this time. Another had formed in English as well. None of them had been there when he'd changed his clothes before heading out to the church for his meeting with the Nazi spies.

Shrugging off his mortal coil, so to speak, Aziraphale had looked at his celestial form and spent the night in tears of awe and sadness. His entire being, including its three heads, were covered in vines, their silver and green leaves sparkling in the starlight. Around each leaf and stem were even more words than before entwined.

And they were spilling over into the tangible world of his corporation. They demanded to be seen, the words. The leaves might simply remind him of Eden, but the words spoke the unutterable truth. 

They were manifestations of every soft thought he'd ever had about Crowley. They were unspoken exhalations of love, never conveyed, but too powerful to be buried completely. They told their story through the ages, the love that Aziraphale felt for his supposed enemy. The ardent admiration he felt whenever a thought turned to his demonic counterpart. They were manifestations of millennia of unspoken love in Sumarian, in Aztec, in Arabic, French, every language uttered by any tongue through the ages. Every language a moment in time, in _their_ time, when Aziraphale's thoughts had turned to Crowley.

Aziraphale walks out of hell, head held high, body thankfully moving by muscle memory because there is no way he could ever consciously emulate Crowley's walk, even in Crowley's own body. He knows, he knows deep down that he should have told Crowley about the writing on his body. He can only hope that Crowley won't have taken any of his clothes off. It's so far easier to hide them on his physical body. At least Crowley can't see his celestial being.

He goes through so many possible explanations as he heads for the park, heart beating double time as he prays Crowley will be there or at least will join him. Because the thought of Crowley not returning from Heaven the way Aziraphale has managed from Hell does not bear thinking about.

And each and every explanation he tries to think of, he discards. He can perhaps explain away the leaves, but there is no way in Heaven or Hell he can explain the words. And Crowley will be able to read them. If not all of them, then most of them and he won't have to understand many of them before he knows what they speak of.

Well, he hurries as much as Crowley's body will let him. The way it slinks makes it impossible for the usual speed Aziraphale might achieve. [1]

At the park he sees a lone figure in familiar clothes lounging on their usual bench. The relief almost breaks him. Aziraphale takes a moment, slows down. He watches his own corporation where it sits. He's never considered sitting like that. He's not even aware that it would be capable of such a slouch.

Apparently Crowley's control over Aziraphale's body is better than his is over Crowley's. And this stirs other things in his current physical body. Aziraphale tries to keep said stirrings down, quiet. He's lucky that Crowley's body isn't making an effort at the moment. Those tight trousers wouldn't hide anything.

It does however seem to react to seeing Aziraphale's corporation as he feels the heartbeat speed up significantly. He puts it down to relief that his friend has returned from Heaven.

He slips into his seat on the bench, too relieved to attempt a slouch that would be befitting the current body. Instead he sits up straight, just soaking up the sunlight and the fact that they are both alive. That Agnes was right in her prophecy and that they had interpreted it right. Messy business of prophecies, really, they often didn't make sense until afterwards. Hindsight was, as the humans were so fond of saying, twenty-twenty.

Aziraphale drinks in the moment. Crowley is at his side, he's alright. Aziraphale _loves_ him and he knows he'll have to tell Crowley. It isn't fair not to and he feels much like the leaves and words have grown on his body, he's close to bursting with it.

He barely pays attention through their swap back, apart from the same tingling in his palm and fingers that he'd experienced when they'd first swapped. There is, however, an almost reluctance in the transfer this time. He notices it between one heartbeat and the next. Like Crowley's body isn't quite ready to let him go. And there is a corresponding lag in Crowley's transfer as well.

"Let me tempt you to a spot of lunch?" Crowley's words resonate inside of him. Such a human way of putting it, but he remembers. He remembers nearly saying the same thing back in Rome. When it hadn't been right for such words to come out of the mouth of an angel. And had this been before Armageddon, he'd have hemmed and hawed, wouldn't he?

"Temptation accomplished," he says instead, happiness twitching through his body, lighting up his insides like a Christmas tree. Like fireworks. They're okay. They're _more_ than okay. They are unharmed and no longer bound by the rules of hereditary enemyship.

If he'd been a little more alert, he might've noticed that Crowley was watching him with even more intensity than normally, but he was just so terribly happy that they were both alive and their little trick seems to have worked.

The table at the Ritz is his doing, but the aftermath is entirely Crowley's.

Aziraphale wants to say and do a million things, but he doesn't know how to voice them. What comes out is "I should be getting back to the bookshop, then." Even he can hear how unconvincing he sounds. He is, however, itching for privacy and although he's rarely allowed himself to look at the words written on his physical body, he wants to now. Wants to familiarize himself with them in a way that he's never dared before. There's that niggling doubt in the back of his mind demanding he look at them, examine them, before he can show Crowley.

He wants to see each and every little detail of how his Heart seemingly has been bleeding through his skin, celestial as well as human.

However, the words are barely out of his mouth before Crowley shakes his head, takes him gently by the elbow, and leads him inside the Ritz itself. Crowley is scarily in tune with what Aziraphale isn't saying tonight. And Aziraphale is caught between being thankful that the demon is taking the lead and tempted to run away, still not entirely ready to do this.

He is transfixed by the touch. First Crowley had taken his elbow and now his other hand is on the small of Aziraphale's back, gently but firmly guiding him along. He can feel the five points of heat burning through his jacket and shirtsleeves and there's an even heavier heat where Crowley's hand rests against his back.

"Come along, angel. I think we need to talk and we need privacy for it. And going back to the bookshop would take too long." Unspoken are the words 'it would also give you too much time to come up with excuses not to.'

In the lift, Aziraphale expects Crowley to let go of him, but he doesn't. He's not sure if Crowley is afraid he might bolt if he lets go, or if perhaps he's forgotten that he's holding on to the angel in the first place.

Crowley squeezes his elbow. Not hard enough to hurt, but more than enough to tell Aziraphale that he's aware and that, for some reason that Aziraphale can't or won't allow himself to consider, he's not letting go.

Aziraphale feels hot and cold all over. The two points of burning heat are where Crowley is touching him and the rest feels like a frozen wasteland compared to it. He opens his mouth to argue. Just because he always does. "Dear boy, are you sure…" he begins, then swallows the words when he feels Crowley pressing a little harder against his lower back.

Under that heat is a trellis of vines, leaves of silver and green, words of undying love and devotion. How can Crowley not feel them through the layers? They are burning under Crowley's touch. And he's completely sidetracked by the thought of what it might feel like to have Crowley touch him elsewhere, _everywhere_.

Exiting the lift, they walk down a deserted hallway. No one else seems to be around and Aziraphale wonders if this is coincidence or demonic intervention. Not that it matters. He lets Crowley lead him down it anyway, would have, even if it had been crowded by people staring at them, at _him_.

Crowley carefully backs him up against a closed door. It looks like all the other doors in the hallway. Right down to the key card reader. Much like when Crowley slammed him against the wall in the old nunnery, Aziraphale feels no fear. What he does feel, however, is as if a roving band of butterflies have taken up residence in his chest and stomach.

"Like I said, we need to talk, angel," Crowley says, crowding him up against the door. "And you'll find excuses if I give you the time it takes to get back to the bookshop."

Aziraphale feels like all the air is sucked out of the hallway. Not that he needs it, but his corporation is short of breath and it seems like nothing he does is helping.

"Really, my dear, and what would I need excuses for?" he asks, in a half-desperate bid to buy himself more time. For what, he doesn't know either.

It's quite obvious to Aziraphale, at least, what it is Crowley wants to talk about. It would explain the elaborate plan of a Ritz hotel room where they can find the peace and room for… his mind decides to blank out. For whatever Crowley wants now that he's seen. Because there is no way around the fact that Crowley must have at least had his shirt off while in Aziraphale's body. His corporation hadn't worn _that_ shirt in Tadfield.

"I don't know, angel, what do _you_ think you'd need excuses for?" Crowley says teasingly. Then something steals the mirth from the curve of his lips, from the quirk of the corner of his mouth. "I think this drove home that while we're immortals, we can have this taken from us. And I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't at least try to have this conversation with you before Heaven or Hell manage to take one of us down. I know you've kept it a secret, Aziraphale, but you don't have to. Not anymore."

"I… yes, perhaps you're right," is what comes out of Aziraphale's mouth, more stable than he'd expected. He knew he'd been gearing up for another deflecting comment when Crowley had still been grinning. But when he'd turned serious, it was like that nervous habit of prevaricating had faded a little. At least enough that Aziraphale can see that he needs to do this, for both their sakes.

He's close enough that he can see the pleased look of surprise in Crowley's eyes, even through the tinted glass.

Crowley looks like he wants to ask him if he's sure, but at least he respects Aziraphale enough to not do so. He just puts his hand on the keycard reader, a process that makes him lean physically into Aziraphale.

Were Crowley your bog standard demon, Aziraphale would be worried about this whole setup. If a demon were to learn what Crowley had probably learned, he'd be in a pickle. A demon would use it against him. 

Crowley wouldn't. If Crowley had been that kind of demon, Aziraphale knows he would not have loved him so deeply through so many years. Had any other demon seen it, though. Deciphered it, it would have put Crowley in danger. It would possibly, considering the covert communications between Heaven and Hell, even have made it to Heaven.

One way or another, it would surely have been used against them. His love for Crowley would have been weaponized to take one or both of them down. Hell could have lured him in by hurting Crowley, Heaven would have punished them both. Crowley for tempting an angel and Aziraphale for, well, falling for it. And he probably wouldn't have been cast out, become a fallen anyway. Considering what Heaven had had in mind for him for punishment for messing with the Apocalypse, he'd have been destroyed. Not even to make a statement. Because while he'd never heard of anything like the adornments of his body among angels, he was no fool. Heaven would quietly dispose of him. Letting him fall would only bring him back to Crowley, they would have argued. And that would not have been punishment enough.

For loving a demon.

The keycard reader beeps, bringing Aziraphale back from his darker thoughts.

Crowley presses his hand against the small of Aziraphale's back. Just, Aziraphale realises, to keep him from stumbling backwards as the door swings silently inwards.

It's like a dance in which one must lead and the other follow their lead. In this, it should be Crowley leading, he's instigated it, but it's Aziraphale who takes a step back into the dark hotel room. Crowley's body elegantly follows his, and while Aziraphale can't boast to be a good dancer [2], they seem so much in sync that the dance doesn't matter. It's older than any dance humans have come up with, so old that demons didn't exist and neither did physical bodies.

They stop in the middle of the room. There's a large, opulent bed and Aziraphale most certainly isn't considering that they may need it. For anything.

He wants to run, he wants to argue, yet no words come out of his mouth and his body is locked in place by Crowley's hands, one still against the small of his back, while the other has migrated to gently cup his ribs. They cover another selection of words. If Aziraphale remembers right, which of course he does, those are in English and had grown one late night at the Dowling estate, while Aziraphale had watched Crowley explain constellations to a very young Warlock.

"Sssstrip down, angel," Crowley all but hisses, "I want a proper look."

Aziraphale feels his corporation flush. He's been ready for this, but not really _ready_. Crowley can't know that the leaves and words are for him. They're just strange adornments on his body. But of course he can read and if he's had a look already, he will have seen the words, he must know there is no one else they can be speaking about.

He raises an eyebrow and takes his coat off, leaving it on the end of the bed. His waistcoat follows. All the while, Crowley is walking in uneven ellipsis around him. Like he's a mesmerized snake or a slightly unstable celestial object.

Aziraphale squashes the urge to turn tail and run. He can't. He can't do that to himself, he can't do it to Crowley, either. Crowley is more important to him than anything else and to be honest, he's sick of carrying this secret alone. Hesitating a little, he takes a deep breath as he undoes his cufflinks and deposits them in the pocket of his trousers. Or he tries to. Crowley intercepts his hand, fast as a snake might strike.

"You might lose them, angel, let me." Crowley's close enough now that Aziraphale can tell his eyes are fully yellow now, no hint of the more human shape of them that Crowley normally sports.

Aziraphale wordlessly hands over the cufflinks and he watches as Crowley walks to the bedside table and sets them down. Then he returns to his orbit around Aziraphale.

Knowing full well that he can't put it off forever, Aziraphale undoes his shirt, slips it off and leaves it on the bed as well, carelessly kicks his shoes off and toes them under the bed. He can feel Crowley hovering behind him, not close enough to touch, but definitely close enough to be noticed.

"Undershirt as well, angel, pleasssse," Crowley says. Voice so quiet that it's barely audible, the hissed ‘s’ of the please only just catching Aziraphale's hearing.

Steeling himself, Aziraphale does as he's asked. And if for a moment he still hopes that Crowley won't know the words are for him, such silly hopes are dashed when Crowley's hands cup his shoulders.

"Mine," he whispers, almost brokenly. "I was right, I thought I could make out when I noticed this morning. I wasn't sure, but…" he trails off and makes a small hiccoughing sound. "They are meant for me, each and every one of them. Angel, how?"

Aziraphale shudders. It feels so strange to have Crowley see this now, but so right. After so many years of hiding, he can't lie and say to Crowley that all the words bleeding through his skin, wrapped in silver and green leaves, aren't for him and him alone.

"You haven't always had them," Crowley mutters. "I'd have noticed back in Rome at least.”

Aziraphale allows himself a small smile. No, thank… well, someone, he hadn't had them back then. At least they hadn't been visible on this plane of existence.

"They weren't visible, Crowley. This corporation has only begun showing them, since…" he hesitates. "Since 1941."

There's a soft inhalation from Crowley, but no words.

"My… celestial body has been showing them for far longer."

"You never said," Crowley whispers, his breath hot against Aziraphale's neck.

"They were all the words I couldn't say out loud," Aziraphale says, admits, finally free to do so. "All my feelings for you that I couldn't voice without risking anyone overhearing and it inadvertently getting back to either Heaven or Hell."

Instead of accusing him of keeping it secret, there's a small almost-sob in Crowley's voice. "You carried this alone."

"I had to." And Aziraphale fully feels that it has been so. And what's done is done, he can't go back through time and tell Crowley that somehow his celestial body is being marked by an unseen force with words of love in any and every perceivable language. Including the original, the first words that appeared were in the language of the angels.

"Show me," Crowley says. "Not this corporation, show me the real you."

"I feel a little embarrassed," Aziraphale admits. Because he does. Last time he checked, his entire celestial form had been covered in writing and leaves. It's so much and to let even Crowley— _especially_ Crowley see is almost too much. Although the words are for him, Aziraphale knows that once Crowley has seen them all, there is nothing else to hide.

"Don't be," Crowley whispers against his neck, his breath hot as hellfire against Aziraphale's skin. "Let go, I'll catch you."

Taking a deep breath, Aziraphale lets his conscience fall from his physical self as his body falls into Crowley's waiting embrace. He's somewhat aware, for a moment, that Crowley lifts him up and puts him on the bed. To rest comfortably. Then he's swallowed up by the vastness of his celestial self. 

For a moment he is so alone. He's towering over the nothingness around him, the protective clouds surrounding his body falling aside. He feels both elated by not being bound as well as the loneliness swallowing him up.

And then he's not alone anymore. A giant serpent curls itself around him. Careful not to squeeze, but heavy and strong enough to anchor him, to ground him, to make him feel not-alone anymore. Heavy enough to anchor a spinning star.

And he unfolds his wings, all of them, eyes opening to look at this being. This is what the humans of the Northern tribes must have based their myths on. Those tales about the great wyrm circling the world. Huge and so black that he almost becomes one with the darkness of space around them. Only, the starlight lights up the underside, which is the most beautiful sapphire red that Aziraphale has ever witnessed. 

_'You are beautiful, my beloved,’_ Aziraphale says, his words filling the spaces in between the stars, slingshot around the moons.

If an ancient creature could blush, Crowley would be doing so. And Aziraphale realises that the scales are changing hue. How curious.

In this state there is no difference between spoken words and thoughts, and Crowley hears him. _'I could never let you see me as a snake, my heart. It changes colour with my emotions.'_ There is also no room for lies. The concept does not exist. _'They would always have given away how I felt about you. You would have noticed the changes and eventually come to the right conclusion.'_

Aziraphale feels Crowley is giving him too much credit. How could he have guessed?

Crowley laughs. It is at the same time the most horrifying sound as it rolls through the darkness on the shadowed night-sides of planets. But it is also the most beautiful sound Aziraphale has ever heard.

_'You would have known when you possessed my body as surely as I knew your words were for me when I was in you.'_

Aziraphale feels no embarrassment in this state. It does not have blood vessels that can contract or expand to let more blood flow through, redden cheeks or necks.

There is only truth.

_'Yes, beloved, they were always for you.'_ And only like this can Crowley fully perceive them. The ones written on Aziraphale's human body are just the newest ones. The ones that made the cup runneth over. The ones that, once Aziraphale had realised he was only lying to himself, had marked his skin.

Crowley conveys that he must see them all and Aziraphale closes his eyes. All of them, spreads his wings wide to give Crowley all the room he needs to explore.

Their essences slide together, Grace and demonic energy tangled together. It could have been painful, should have been, were they still what they had originally been. But Aziraphale's Grace recognises Crowley for what he is, and Crowley's hellfire blood, while burning hot under the scales, has no other effect on Aziraphale than a beacon of warmth in the cold depths of this plane.

A serpent's tongue searches over his celestial body and Aziraphale feels the shiver go through it. He tries to hold still as Crowley searches out each stem and leaf, each word written among the ribs of the leaves, from base to apex.

There is no real perception of time in this in-between place where their non-human bodies rest. It takes Crowley the blink of an eye to read all the words, but a lifetime or five to digest.

In the meantime, each flick of tongue over leaf is the purest pleasure and the greatest torture. Aziraphale can't not touch anymore. He runs celestial fingers down over black and red scales and feels the corresponding shiver in Crowley's body.

There's a tightening in the coils around him and he curves his wings in, to hold Crowley impossibly closer, to never let him go. They both feel their essences bleeding together. When they had exchanged corporations, it had felt marvellous, but it had been a pale echo of this.

A very pale echo.

This is like the tides of space, the gravitational pull of a planet or star. The force that rolls through them both; that causes stellar explosions and super massive black holes.

It is exquisite, but also far too much. He can feel everything that Crowley is feeling and he knows Crowley can feel everything he does. This is nothing short of too much pleasure and yet not enough.

It rises impossibly high, like lightning along a lightning rod, only billions of times hotter and faster. Twin stars give off less heat in their hour of birth than two celestials, if one demonic, yet there is no way to tell the difference, especially not at the peak. And peak it does. Raw energy coalesces and tears through them, rips them apart, shuffles them like a deck of cards and puts them back together again. For a moment, a lifetime, a split second, only one being exits, swirls of pure bliss and ecstasy light up the dark space, outshines even the brightest of stars, puts even the quasars to shame. [3]

And then clouds swirl and gather again, they gently cradle the lovers, protective as always.

Aziraphale feels himself falling back, shrinking as his celestial self finds its earthly shell again. However, something is very much different. He doesn't open his eyes at first. He can still feel his celestial body, yet unlike before, it is no longer alone. He can feel Crowley still lazily coiled around him.

And speaking of lazy, he smiles to himself. Aziraphale opens his eyes to look at the ceiling. His corporation is sweating and nearly panting. Next to him, curled up against him with a leg shoved between his, Crowley is in no better state.

"That was-" Crowley rasps out.

"Yes, quite," Aziraphale agrees, breathlessly.

"I want to see it again," Crowley mutters, turning his head to push his nose against Aziraphale's neck. "But first I want to see the ones on this corporation." He pats a hand across Aziraphale's waist and hip.

Aziraphale wants to ask him to slow down, but he laughs instead. With delight, with the exhilaration of being free and being _known_ , but most of all with the pure knowledge that he is loved as much as he loves. That his celestial self is no longer alone in the vast empty space. It can lie dormant, entwined in its lover's embrace.

As they lay entwined on a bed in a Ritz hotel room.

The End

* * *

1Not running, NEVER running. One has composure and self respect, of course.Return to text

2If one does not count the gavotte.Return to text

3The poor dears aren't used to being outshone. They'll get used to it. It won't be the last time.Return to text

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Atmilliways,
> 
> I read your wishes and was almost devoured by the viciousness of plotbunnies. So much opportunity for softness and adoring. So much opportunity to write non-human intercourse *laughs*. I tried the road of porn, but it just wouldn't really do with anything more that the utmost softness. I hope you can find it in your heart forgive me for that. You said tattoos, and somehow it became eldritch rather than human in that aspect. You mentioned mood-colour-changing serpents. I managed to squeeze it in between one (1) angel dithering all over the place.
> 
> I hope you can look to the skies and imagine somewhere, up there, in a fortress of swirling, rainbow clouds, one serpent wrapped snugly around a many-winged, many-eyed, three headed celestial.


End file.
